Both World War I and World War II lasted for four years. We fought vast empires with organized armies and navies with tanks, airplanes, and submarines, yet it took us only four years to defeat them. … World War III, which began on September 11, 2001, has been going on for nearly seven years now, but there is no end in sight. There are no clear signs that we are winning the war, or even leading in the game. … Why isn’t this a slam dunk? It seems to me that there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don’t: hate. We don’t hate our enemies nearly as much as they hate us. They are consumed in pure and intense hatred of us, while we appear to have PC’ed hatred out of our lexicon and emotional repertoire. We are not even allowed to call our enemies for who they are, and must instead use euphemisms like “terrorists.” … Hatred of enemies has always been a proximate emotional motive for war throughout human evolutionary history. Until now.

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.

And there you have it.

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Does this argument even deserve comment? I’ll just note from a foreign policy realist view that 35 nukes wouldn’t be enough 90% of the Arab world, which is only a small fraction of the total Muslim population on the planet.

He is working on the assumption that any American living in the Middle East who can’t escape in two days is not a real American, and as an apostate to American values is a legitimate target of the ensuing nuclear holocaust.

By gosh, I think he’s right! And if we had the police summarily execute on the spot anyone they suspected of a crime – even parking violations – and their entire extended family, well heckfire, we’d have the whole crime problem licked in a matter of months.

He is working on the assumption that any American living in the Middle East who can’t escape in two days is not a real American, and as an apostate to American values is a legitimate target of the ensuing nuclear holocaust

But they are mostly working for oil companies. Surely they are truer Americans than the rest?

i love how the thought experiment ends two days after it begins without considering any potential ramifications of dropping “35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East.” like world war iv, for instance.

Luckily, Ann Coulter would never *be* President, because she thinks that women shouldn’t vote, let alone stand for office. So I don’t even have to think about all the other things that are wrong, wrong, wrong with this article.

Dammit! Herr futzinfarb got to the Dr. Strangelove reference seven hours before me. Now I feel all deflated and useless. If only I could hate something, like those nameless euphenisms: that would make me feel all powerful and erect again!

Ah yes, Satoshi “Africa is poor because it’s full of stupid black people” Kanazawa. I’m amazed he has a job in somewhere other than politics. However, mentioning “Psychology Today” is likely to make genuine psychology-types giggle, snort, and guffaw.

Not a big socio-bio fan largely because many of its proponents draw ethical conclusions from the naturalist data, and because there are major inconsistencies the behavioral outcomes of conscious reasoning and instinct, but Kanazawa isn’t falling into either trap here:

what is natural is not necessarily ethical
hate is a basic human emotion
hatred of enemies was openly propagated by governments during those times (have you ever seen the WWII-era Bugs Bunny cartoons or Dr. Seuss
hate led governments with societal support to act savagely toward their enemies in WWI & WWII.
hatred is not propagated as policy now
a hateful person like Coulter would have acted in a violent, hateful way after 9/11

I don’t think any of this is a good idea, in large part because there’s no chance in hell that al Qaeda or its off-shoots have any chance of defeating the US and its allies in any meaningful way. And hating Muslims would be stupid as well as immoral because Muslims qua Muslims don’t attack the US. Only those enamored of or persuaded by violent radical Muslim fundamentalism do.

But let’s face it, the “war on terror” usage is widespread in US and European political discourse (I simply don’t know what is the case other areas), and with little concern about what this means in terms of military violence. Blackwater gets heaped with scorn, but there is little discussion of US or other countries use of aerial attacks in Afghanistan or Iraq. This is not a new issue: on the US side, it came up in Panama, Iraq (1990), Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. There has been little political will to confront it. Not surprisingly since the solution would probably be male adult conscription to provide man-power to return to high-casualty, house-to-house raid methods.

In WWII, we had to hate the people we were bombing to justify bombing them. Today, we don’t even have to hate them to bomb them; we just have to find it too inconvenient to do otherwise.

Because a “war” waged against geographically dispersed, ideologically-motivated, decentrally-organized fanatics attempting to disrupt social and economic structures is exactly the same as a war fought against a nationalized army intent on capturing land and tactical resources. Why should one take longer than the other?

Oh, that’s right. We really, really hated the second bunch, not so much the first…

The Coulter reference is quite telling; it’s not about saying things that make sense, it’s about saying things that get attention. And for some folks, any kind of attention is better than no types of attention.

44: The London School of Economics, although it is in London (which is not in the US), does from time to time hire Americans. And given that Kanazawa got both his MA and his PhD in the US before teaching at Cornell and Illinois-Urbana, one becomes suspicious that he is one of them.
Sorry. We let him into the country, but he’s one of yours.

I remain unconvinced that 35 nuclear warheads are enough to kill all “potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children”. Many countries would remain whose citizens might one day look sideways at the US.

“Psychologies” magazine has certainly got spicier over the last couple of months; when I picked up a copy on a train [1] it was all full of quizzes like “Is He Really Committed To You?” aimed at the soppier kind of bird.

[1] yes that is how I got to read it, do you think I’m lying or something?

I think the really interesting thing is the assumption that the USA would not only have survived nine months of a Coulter presidency, but done so with its nuclear weapons roughly intact. Seems unlikely to me.

Heck, they have *lots* more than 35. Wouldn’t have taken mopre than a dozen to deal with the PRK, just one for the ICC at the Hague…. Cuba? Hmmm…. depends on the prevailing winds, after all, Coulter has a house in Florida, doesn’t she?

Moving on from that nutter, #65 opens up a point that’s gradually becoming more clear to me as I have more to do with PhD examinations.

Though in theory it’s the external examiner’s job to ensure academic rigour, in practice, the internal is more keen about this. After all, it’s not immediately obvious who K’s external was, but any fule kno that he got his PhD from the University of Arizona.

Draw your own conclusions about the University of Arizona. I know I just did.

Mmm-kay. We can let the no-good Americans travelling in the Middle East go. Brits, Canadians, Old Europeans, Indians, citizens of every other nation – you just got in the way. Sorry about that. Guess you won’t hate us, ‘cos we acted out of virtue.

Plus, last I checked – and I’m English, so no, I can read a map – Afghanistan isn’t in the Middle East. So Osama Bin Laden is saying “WTF?” along with the rest of the still-living.